A burning lake. 2012.

I was really interested to read this story from ABC News. Apparently New South Wales Rural Fire Service has been dealing with an extremely unusual fire at Lake Woytchugga near Wilcannia.

For weeks a fire has been burning under the lake bed. The lake is a seasonal one and is dry at this time of year so we aren’t talking about burning water here, but when the fire teams attended they were baffled to find that the edge of the lake bed was on fire.

They have tried flooding the area using water tankers, and digging up the hot ground, but the fire has managed to resist their efforts and continue burning. Their main concern is that the fire may spread to nearby vegetation and begin spreading above ground.

The fire service is not sure what is actually burning, and are assuming that there is some sort of organic material underground that is continuing to smoulder.*

I wonder what is really going on there? Is there coal under the lake that is fuelling the fire or is there something else going on? What do you think coud be under there?

Is there a volcano down there just waiting to let loose on some unsuspecting christmas campers?

Will there be an adventurous soul drunken yobbo who ventures out on to the lake, cracking the surface and revealing a molten pit of doom?

Of course this redshirt will perish in the process, but every story needs the death of an unknown to get us going, doesn’t it?

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23 comments on “A burning lake. 2012.”

Amazing Metan. Even if it was coal down there fuelling the fire, you have to wonder how it started there in the first place. Maybe this is the entrance to one of those Journey to the Centre of the Earth caves and one of the cave dwellers was having a crafty fag that he didn’t put out. All I can imagine is that there is a ventilation shaft there that’s allowing molten lava through as at least that would explain the fire getting started.
Please let us know if you hear any more about it. I wonder when the lake is due back and whether that will extinguish it or will it create an outdoor steam room?

I really want to know more about this fire too. Hopefully there are more reports about it.

Since we have just started getting into summer here, and Wilcannia is a very hot, dry place anyway, it will likely be some time before there is any rain heading in that direction. I doubt the fire will be out any time soon but I really wonder how much water it would take to extinguish something like that.

I love the idea of the fire being caused by one of the hollow earth clan mismanaging his butt. 🙂

Fascinating… I think it’s most likely to be peat that’s smouldering. What intrigues me is where the oxygen is coming from. Fires need two things: fuel and oxygen. So air must be being drawn down somehow. Shame there weren’t any pictures on the ABC site.

I thought of peat too, either that or a coal bed. I can’t really think of anything else that would burn quietly for so long and be hard to extinguish. Perhaps there are cracks further along the lake bed that are acting as vents and allowing oxygen through.

It is a very interesting event though isn’t it? I wonder if we will ever find out more?

I found a caravanners forum http://caravanersforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=33114 where a discussion was had about the possibility of coal seam gas fracking being the cause but they doubted if the area had any coal seams. The last post I saw was the same volcano suggestion as mine, hopefully we are both wrong! 🙂

Interesting… near when I come from is Burning Mountain 9http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_Mountain) which has been burning for approx. 6000 years apparently. In true disinterested local style, I never visited it, but I wonder if it’s conceivable that the under lake fire could continue to burn similarly.

What an interesting thing! I think that this fire is probably something like your Burning Mountain fire. I wonder if they will ever put this one out or if it will go on for the forseeable future too.

I love that you have never been there. It is so typical isn’t it, the thing we live closest to is the thing we never bother with. I live in the Yarra Valley and have never been to one of the vineyards. People come here every weekend in buses to partake of a tipple and we have never been bothered, even though we could easily walk to the nearest one…..

I think it was Dad who put me off the idea of Burning Mountain – he made many trips, in the tow truck, rescuing people who were a bit too intrepid 🙂
Wingen is in the upper part of the Hunter Valley, and the well known HV vineyards are only an hour or so drive but I didn’t visit them until my mid 30’s – the 1st vineyard I went to was in the Napa Valley, CA. But at least I wasn’t within walking distance 😉
We have a vineyard a few kms from TA, and I have been to and sampled that one.

In that case I bet your dad saw enough Burning Mountain to last a lifetime. When you see vines on a regular basis they lose their allure. We drive past them wherever we go and they are spreading further through beautiful farmland every year. Soon we’ll be overrun!

Wow, that town is quite close isn’t it? And is it just me, or does that lake look strangely round to you? If the surrounding countryside were not so flat I’d be guessing that it was a caldera. We really do have some interesting topography. 😀

We certainly do. I tried to look for the origins of the lake but couldn’t rally find anything definitive. Perhaps it is something exciting but then again it could just be the lowest part of flat country.

Hopefully we hear more about this fire story, at least it is not so remote from other people that no-one notices what is going on.

For some reason I started thinking about all those hot springs, especially in New Zealand’s north island. I know there are earthquakes but nothing is actually exploding into an active volcano etc so this odd lake of ours is probably quite benign. Least I hope so!

If you do find anything further please post it coz this thing has me intrigued.

We are lucky in Australia as our volcanoes have been quiet for a very long time. Doesn’t mean they aren’t still close by though, just look out your window after you read this….

“Where the granitic magma broke through to the surface, huge volcanoes erupted lavas and ash flows that now form the Macedon and Dandenong Ranges. The Dandenong Ranges were formed from acid volcanic rocks, mainly rhyodacite, that erupted when a large triangular block of sedimentary rocks bounded by faults collapsed into an underlying magma chamber. This forced magma to the surface, where it erupted as ash flows from vents along the faults.”http://www.emelbourne.net.au/biogs/EM00636b.htm

The one volcano thing I have read that worried me was from Bill Brysons ‘A Short History of Nearly Everything’ (one of my favourite books ever). To read about the supervolcano that is Yellowstone National Park with a magma chamber 72 km across and a restless attitude makes me wonder what we would do if it decided to let loose.